#code foretold co-op

[cradle-of-darkness]

recent doodles

[acoldghostlypresence]

Anyone know where I can read Epithet Erased Code Foretold Co-op?

It's a fanfic told through Google slides like a visual novel I saw on here awhile ago, embarrassingly I've had it waiting in my tabs to read for ages only to just now realise I only have the link to the second part lol

[cradle-of-darkness]

I've been vaguely mentioning a thingy I'm making in a couple posts and well!! this is part of it!!!!

I'm working on a little fanfic told through a make shift visual novel (in the form of google slides). the story follows the museum trio and some of my ocs visiting an arcade and getting into some shenanigans and tomfoolery (and also discovering a secret oooo)

it'll be finished probably some time in september, so in the meantime here's some of the art I've made for it that I can share! :)

[cradle-of-darkness]

now that cfco has been up for a while.. here's evelyn!!! her lore used to be a lot different before I started taking this idea seriously but her character still has a lot of remnants of that. especially since I designed her before rewriting stuff too.

might start posting some old-ish oc stuff now that it's out because there's a LOT more I could yap about involving raziel, jay, and evelyn that wasn't touched on in cfco 😭 (send me asks about them if u want. stares at u with big wet eyes)

btw oooh u wanna read cfco so bad

[cradle-of-darkness]

hey!! I have lots of stuff I made for cfco (this thing!) that I really want to share and also just keep in one spot, so here's kind of a cfco """artbook""". LOTS of rambling about my ocs up ahead!!! you have been warned!!!!

old code foretold co-op art under cut ↓

first up is this little thumbnail of a mock up poster/book cover! this was made while cfco lived only in my imagination, before I actually started to seriously consider making it into something tangible. little did I know that I would eventually repurpose this design into the title art 😈

I realized this design wouldn't work vertically if i was gonna make cfco in google slides so I switched some stuff around and boom!!!! more detailed sketch!!!!!

here's a placeholder background I slapped together and used while testing out how I wanted things to look (textbox design, font, color palette, sprites). if you look closely at the background of jay and raziel's infocards you can see I used this for those since I didn't have the actual backgrounds drawn at that point. there were actually some earlier textbox designs with a little icon that was supposed to show the face of whichever character was speaking to make it more clear, but ended up cutting that since i thought it'd be unnecessary extra work for me

here's a thumbnail for what was supposed to be the final slide! I kinda wished I finished this but honestly I kinda forgot about it 😭 plus there wouldn't be a lot of room for the text in this design. I also think it's a little misleading because it implies evelyn is still In The Walls when she is not. she is elsewhere now. hopefully in therapy

some of the first iterations of jay my stupid clown son who I love oh so dearly. oh god where do I even start with him. well for starters these sketches are from OCTOBER!!!!! of LAST YEAR!!!!!! WILD!!!!!!!! anyway as you can see he's pretty different here. I can't talk about his design without saying that from the very beginning he was designed to be a foil to sylvie and I tried to get that across in just about anywhere I could. at first I just thought the idea of an "anti-sylvie" would be cool, but then that idea quickly evolved into a completely separate character.

I picked his epithet, "sunshine", to contrast "drowsy". I didn't wanna go for the exact opposite word to drowsy like "awake" or "energetic", but it got me thinking about night/day parallels and I figured I could do something with that, which made me land on "sunshine"

jay is a clown who dropped out of school and doesn't want to be taken seriously because he's exhausted from the restrictions his family put on him! meanwhile sylvie is a psychologist who graduated early and wants to be taken seriously because he craves respect and validation (possibly out of a lack of respect from his family). parallels!!! I could honestly go on and on about everything in jay's personality that foils sylvie's but I'll just stick to his design because idk if anyone else wants to hear all that 😭

so yeah uh back to his design. his mask used to cover his eyes! I changed it to cover his mouth since sylvie's glasses cover only his eyes, I thought it'd be more fitting if jay's mask covered whatever sylvie's glasses don't cover

he also had a star motif! I felt like this didn't line up with him being sun themed so I scrapped it

lots of jays!!! they're all squished together on one image because tumblr image limit

because his color palette is based off of an inverted version of sylvie's, I already knew I wanted his main colors to be blue, red/pink, black, and brown/bronze. I messed around with this palette a lot before I got it to look ok. there's some earlier versions of his design where he's more pink than red

his design here differs a little from what I ended up sticking with!!!

- the cuffs of his sleeves and his gloves got their colors switched around

- the clown nose on his mask became an actual separate piece instead of just a flat red spot

- the ruffles on his undershirt. gone

- slightly simplified bangs

- no more blue streaks in hair!!! I actually kinda wish I kept these :(

he was actually supposed to be much more outwardly malicious. like one of these characters who does whatever sounds the most fun at the moment regardless of the consequences or their morals. I thought it'd be cool if instead of the usual little shine I give characters on the side of their eyes, jay had a triangle shape towards the top of his eye that looked like a shine, but then when he gets serious and narrows his eyes, it's no longer visible and it makes his eyes look like there's no light in them

I gave him a subtle X motif because I thought it was like the opposite of a swirl. a swirl curls in on itself while an X sticks out sharply in different directions

near the top of the image is an idea for jay's "phoenix design". his powers aren't shown a lot in cfco, but I like to think that after he's defeated in a fight, he can revive himself for a short period of time... like how a phoenix is reborn 😱😱😱😱 anyway this design was supposed to be what he might look like after reviving. it needs some work but I like his hat

the bottom of this image is sketches for his sprites!!!!

and speaking of his sprites...... here's some quick sketches I made for some of his poses!!!!! I wanted his sprites to mirror the poses of some of sylvie's portraits, but with a contrasting emotion. when sylvie's angry he stands up straight and holds his arm out in an accusatory pose. when jay is happy he jolts up and reaches out his arm in delight. when sylvie is proud of himself he leans forward and gestures towards himself. when jay is nervous he jerks to one side and brings his hand to his collar out of uncertainty. can you tell how much I wanted jay to parallel sylvie

by the way while I'm on the topic I think it's worth mentioning: jay and sylvie are...... kinda maybe sorta oc x canon......... (LOUD BOOING SFX) I wrote them as friends and that's how they'll stay but I really love them together and I like imagining, in a scenario where they're both in better places mentally, they're in a qpr. ok. so what. sue me.

moving on from jay, here's one of raziel's first designs all the way from december of last year!!!! this was around when I started to roughly construct the plot of cfco in my brain. i really like how he looks here but I had to leave behind some elements of this design to prevent it from feeling too cluttered and to make them easier to redraw multiple times for their sprites. the design of their sleeves was actually based on a jacket I saw around this time that I thought looked cool

and finally here's evelyn! the first image is one of my first drawings of her along with an idea for what she would've looked like in the past. then the second is a sketch of her portrait compared to the final one. there's actually a lot I want to say about her and by extension cfco as a whole

in my head, cfco was a lot different. it just existed as little collections of scenes I would imagine that I thought I could string together and form a cohesive story out of. these little scenes started to evolve and become more complex, which made me realize I would not be able to make them into anything in that state.

cfco was going to have a much deeper plot centered around evelyn discovering a secret about how epithets function. this secret would have been a lot for one person to handle and being burdened with this knowledge would have caused her a great deal of stress, so she made a nearly impossible game which would reveal this secret to whoever wins it so that someone else can share this burden. I realized while writing the draft of cfco that at my current writing ability, I wouldn't be able to pull a story like this off, and also that whatever I made this secret would probably end up being not possible in the world of ee as more lore gets revealed, so I switched some stuff around and now it's not about that anymore, but I think a consequence of that was now the plot feels a little rushed and unpolished 😭 oh well

the mark on her chest was also originally a scar from something related to this version of the story. I wanted to keep that part of her design even though it's not a scar in the current version of her character, so it's a birthmark now

I thought the themes of "forbidden knowledge" accompanied by vague religious imagery were cool for the original idea and I had integrated these themes into the characters and story so much by that point that it'd be a waste to turn it back around so I figured I should just keep them in even if it makes less sense

raziel is very angel themed! the straps on the back of their jacket are supposed to look like angel wings. the circles all over their outfit is supposed to give the feeling of halos, or the many eyes of a seraphim. evelyn has a pomegranate shaped necklace and her hair is supposed to be shaped like a pomegranate. her surname even used to be plague-odd, pun on "play god" (which I ended up changing to a similar sounding name). raziel and evelyn also have angel numbers associated with them. raziel's is 111 (intuition) and it's present in his birthday, while evelyn's is 444 (protection) and is present in her age and birthday

that's about it!!! if you read this far thank you so much 🙏 even though it's not very good, I'm glad I made cfco after spending so long being scared to write something and share it online. not to be that guy who wants people to ask him about his ocs but if u wanna know anything else about these guys 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 u can ask 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 I love talking about them (especially jay. if you couldn't already tell he's the favorite child)

by the way here's all of jay and raziel's sprites. the links should hopefully work????

jay

raziel

[cradle-of-darkness]

another epithet oc 😈..... there's a little project I'm working on that I might finish. that may or may not involve my epithet ocs

they're mysterious, strong-willed, and likes to spend their free time around arcades. they're a littlr famous for beating a game that's supposed to reveal something top secret to whoever wins. they're the only known winner

their epithet allows them to catch glimpses into possible futures and to manifest omens to communicate their visions

[cradle-of-darkness]

here's one of my epithet ocs!! jay my silly guy!!! I've had him for a while now and I might make some stuff with him so here he is

he's a whimsical, slightly airheaded travelling clown. his epithet (among other things) can manipulate sunlight, which he likes to use for performances!

[cradle-of-darkness]

a silly little ee oc thing to distract my mutuals from that post I reblogged with "soon" (soon might not be until a week or 2 from now)

🕹️

[cradle-of-darkness]

I need more facts about Raziel I love them pls drop some lore about them

I'm glad u like them!!!! 🫶 thank u for giving me an opportunity to yap 😈

I don't think their personality came through in cfco the way I've been envisioning it because I'm not very experienced in writing. so a good chunk of this'll be me elaborating more on what I picture them being like

- they're very straightforward and don't like to sugarcoat things. they just tell things like they see it

- they also tend to see their perspective as fact and struggle with considering outside opinions and realizing when they're wrong. in earlier notes for their character I described them as "saying everything like it's a universally known fact" but I don't know how accurate that would be now

- both of these points can make them come off as kind of self centered. unbeknownst to them.

- they have a very strong sense of morals that they abide by no matter what. most of these morals are actually really selfless

- they're a fast and precise decision maker. they're quick to consider multiple factors at once and all the potential outcomes of a decision. they can do all this so quickly because their epithet showing them possible futures has basically given them the training to quickly make predictions (often fairly accurately)

- their mind is always busy with something. if you could hear their thoughts it'd be several different voices speaking over eachother at once all the time. I actually wanted their eyebrows to always look somewhat furrowed because they're kind of constantly stressed

- they're very strategic and are always two steps ahead (both on purpose and because of their epithet doing its own thing). perpetually Locked In

- he's a really empathetic person. so much so that he always feels responsible to make as many things right as he can. but he also doesn't like accepting help because he's locked in the mindset that he needs to bare the burden alone

- I honestly did not come up for a proper reason for why he's like this. I always had a vague idea that it had something to do with his family but im not sure on what direction I should go with that

- sylvie points out the way he walks like he's on a mission from god in cfco but additionally I think that would be juxtaposed by how when he stands still his stance looks very calm and serene (even though that doesn't match his mind)

- he likes games because they allow him to keep his naturally strategic mind busy with something inconsequential

- he prefers games that aren't story heavy and aren't a large investment to get into. which is why he likes arcades so much

- he often gets so focused on games that he's unfazed by any distractions around him. luckily he knows when to quit on his own most of the time but if you want his attention while he's playing a game you're just not getting it

- more on his epithet. his visions are triggered when something related to a possible future comes up. (which is why giovanni saying "destroyed" triggered that vision in cfco)

- he gets visions really sporadically. he could get visions every hour or get no visions for like a couple days in a row. I imagine the higher his proficiency gets the less random they'll get. he's also probably close to learning how to trigger a vision on command

- sometimes the visions from their epithet blend in to reality so well that they don't even realize it's a visions and go on with what they saw like it just happened. sometimes they don't know if they're feeling deja vu or if they just mistook a vision for reality. I think this might've delayed them discovering their epithet for a while

- not shown in cfco, but he can also manifest omens. he might do this to achieve certain outcomes if telling someone to do something directly would be ineffective

- lightning bolts are one of these omens! but he usually doesn't summon them intentionally and they just happen in exceptionally urgent situations